Kat wrote,
>Darryl Shannon wrote:
>
>
>>Kat: what in YHWH's name leads you to believe that I am "right->>wing"?
>
>Darryl, I have only a murky grasp of political terms. I know that >the left
>is socialist and the right is capitalist, and I know you're >capitalist. If
>you're going to take offense then you're going to >have to explain to me
>exactly what's wrong with that definition, >aside from being overly
>simplistic.
>
As some one who is considered left wing by most of the people around him,
let me try to address this. First, it is very risky telling someone what
they are. And, in the United States, the overwhelming majority of people
reject socialism as fundamentally defined: the ownership of the means of
production by the government. It is certainly possible, BTW, to have a true
representative government and a socialistic government at the same time.
Right wing is typically a term for people who are fairly extreme
conservatives. For example, Delay is right wing, Bush is not though to be.
Right wing people in the United States would tend to wish to decrease the
power of the US government to significantly less than what it is now, and
think that the moral underpinnings of the US are being washed away by a sea
of relativism and humanism. While I would think that Darryl is more
conservative than I am, and would tend to argue that he overestimates the
power of the market to self regulate and underestimates the value of
governmental intervention, I do tend to see us as favoring different
balances of a mixed ecconomy.
>Fascism kills; that is, in this day in age, so much an accepted
>fact as to be a truism. I am suggesting that maybe you need to >examine
>that moral position of yours a bit more closely before you >act the
>Righteous Chr... excuse me, Capitalist.
>
>Facists kill people who don't fit their model of perfection. How are >we,
>as capitalists, different?
This type of argument mirrors the argument equating support for social
security with support for Joseph Stalin. If you want to have a contrast and
compare between systems that are fundamentally socialistic and those that
are fundamentally capitalistic, then one needs to include the Great Leap
Forward in the socialistic camp as well as hungry children in the US.
I think this argument holds water only insofar as its worthwhile to
understand that we are all abusive to some degree or another. For example,
no parent has every raised a child without ever doing anything that is
abusive. However, that doesn't mean that we are no better parents than the
fathers that sexually and physically abuse their young daughters.
We are different because we didn't scapegoat the Jewish people and try to
systematically destroy them. Indeed, my Jewish friends tell me that Jews
consider the US the safest place in the world for Jews. Americanization is
a very powerful force, because it allows people to keep their own identity
while becoming full Americans.
>
>Faciscm kill people to feed their system. So does capitalism.
>
Fascism needs scapegoats. Capitalism does not. While its true that
capitalism must be modified and/or controlled in order to keep wealth from
being overwhelming concentrated, that doesn't mean that one cannot have a
modified capitalism that provides a very good mechanism for the generation
of wealth and a decent mechanism for the distribution of wealth.
>Faciscm sacrifices morality to itself: so does capitalism, as I've >been
>noticing more and more the more I take political science >classes or (God
>help me) watch the news.
Capitalism certainly isn't inherently moral. However, a moral person can
believe that a variation on capitalism is the best system we have to meet
moral ends. One of the things that I've noticed about the younger posters
is that they often compare our system with an idyllic undefined system. As
an older person, its my obligation to ask "well how is that going to work?"
The main advantages that I see for capitalism is that
1) There is an opportunity to try a number of different solutions, with a
means for rewarding the "best" solution. Best may not be right in all
particulars, but there are many times, such as cost cutting, where best is
fairly objective.
2) The importance of political considerations over harsh realities is
decreased. Companies that ignore realities because they conflict with what
the bureaucrats want tend to be less successful in the long run.
3) With private control of the means of production, there is, at least, no
direct conflict of interest in the governmental regulation of these means.
That is to say, the government does not have to correct itself with safety
regulations, etc. It is at least a nominally outside entity. When the
government both controls and regulates the means of productions, there are
no real checks and balances.
>
>To summarize: prove your point, and *then* you can be irritable when
> >people call you names. Until then...
Kat, its in the etiquette guide: "we don't call names." People don't have
to prove their point to your satisfaction to earn the privilege of not being
called names.
Dan M. (who's not home right now)
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